Regional Outlook — QLD1: Saturday 16 May 2026

The Queensland spot price sits at $91.60/MWh as at 06:30 AEST, with total demand at 5,617 MW. That current price is materially below the morning peak, where dispatch intervals touched $123.07/MWh around 17:30 AEST before easing through the afternoon and evening. Overnight the region traded as low as $21–$22/MWh in the small hours, so the 24-hour range has been wide. The current price has stabilised in a narrow $91.60–$96.83/MWh band across the past two hours, consistent with late-evening demand sitting around 5,400–5,600 MW.

The generation mix at the current interval is dominated by black coal at 1,813 MW, followed by wind at 1,066 MW, gas OCGT at 305 MW, battery at 196 MW, and hydro at 131 MW. Solar is negligible at 0.11 MW, consistent with the 06:30 AEST timestamp and overnight conditions. Wind is contributing meaningfully at roughly 32% of the current dispatch stack. Total renewable penetration sits at 39.67%, having tracked as high as 69.88% in the early hours of this morning when demand was low and wind output was sustained. Carbon intensity is 0.5109 tCO2/MWh, up from a low of 0.2593 tCO2/MWh at 10:00 AEST when renewable share was at its overnight peak. The intensity has been climbing since the morning demand ramp began, peaking near 0.5558 tCO2/MWh at 04:00 AEST before modestly easing.

Predispatch forecasts point to prices rising from the current $91.60/MWh toward $105.95/MWh for the 07:00 AEST interval — the most recent run issued at 06:01 AEST shows $105.95/MWh for that half-hour. The 07:30 AEST interval is forecast at $82.50/MWh across multiple runs, suggesting a step down after the morning peak window. Further out, the 08:00 AEST interval is forecast in the high $30s to low $40s/MWh across consistent predispatch runs, and overnight windows from 09:00 AEST onward show forecasts in the low-to-mid $20s and occasionally sub-zero, reflecting anticipated low overnight demand and wind generation. Today's weather outlook — 98% cloud cover and near-zero solar potential — means rooftop and utility solar will not provide the usual daytime suppression effect on prices. Expect the morning peak to be more sustained than a clear-sky May day would typically produce.

The most significant active notice for Queensland is AEMO's Forecast Lack of Reserve Level 2 (LOR2) declared for the QLD region from 06:00 to 19:30 AEST on Tuesday 19 May 2026, with a forecast capacity reserve requirement of 760 MW against a minimum available reserve of only 605 MW — a shortfall of 155 MW. A companion LOR1 notice covers the full 24 hours of 19 May and also the period from 13:00 on 18 May. AEMO is seeking a market response. Separately, an unplanned outage of Murraylink (constraint set I-ML_ZERO inv